Baan and CPQ in global alliance....
John
Baan, Compaq in global deal to offer
mid-market bundle
By Torsten Busse
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 6:11 PM PT, Jan 12, 1998
Compaq Computer and Baan on Tuesday will announce a global alliance under which the
companies will offer a product bundle designed to reduce the implementation time of
Baan's business applications at small to medium-size businesses.
The Compaq and Baan Enterprise Business Solutions for small and medium-size
enterprises is a product bundle that includes Baan's enterprise resource planning (ERP)
application software, Baan IV, and a relational database pre-installed on a Compaq server
running under Windows NT. The package will be available in North America beginning
Tuesday and will be rolled out in Europe, Latin America, and Asia during the course of the
year, company officials said.
The product bundle will take some of the headaches out of implementing Baan's complex
business-management software, Baan IV, because it will come from an authorized Compaq
VAR already pre-installed, pretested, and pre-sized, said Dave Rodgers, vice president,
database and business application solutions, for Compaq's Enterprise Computing Group.
"This breaks new ground," Rodgers said. "The ERP software will be available at a very
attractive price point and because the bundles arrive pre-packaged and pretested, they
reduce the complexity and risk associated with integrating complex systems, and in turn
shorten the implementation time."
Compaq and Baan believe that pretesting and pre-installation may cut in half the time it
takes to get productive with Baan IV, Rodgers said.
Included in the hardware/software bundle are either a Microsoft SQL Server or an Oracle
8 database; Baan's Baan IV ERP software (minus the project management software
intended for large organizations); Cheyenne's ARCserve Recovery Backup Software; and
Compaq's Insight Manager Software, all pre-installed and tuned on an appropriately
configured Compaq ProLiant 6000 server or any other Compaq server a customer selects,
Rodgers said.
The bundle is priced starting at $150,000 for a 10-user package, Rodgers said. That figure
does not include the cost of customizing and adapting the system to the needs of individual
companies, Rodgers said.
While declining to project potential revenues, Rodgers said Compaq expects the
medium-market program will generate a significantly higher number of server unit sales than
existing programs targeted at large enterprises.
All major ERP vendors have recently switched their focus to the medium-market segment
as the large enterprise market has reached a certain level of saturation.
In the third quarter of 1997, Baan gained 28 percent of its revenues from sales of
NT-based packages sold through channel partners. By the end of 1998, between 60
percent and 70 percent of Baan's sales will come from Windows NT-based systems, said
Doug Sallen, vice president of strategic alliances at Baan.
The integrated package extends an alliance formed by Compaq and Baan in June of 1996,
under which the two companies are offering its products jointly to large enterprise
customers.
Similar Compaq alliances with Baan competitors Oracle, SAP, and PeopleSoft are
possible under the nonexclusive agreement with Baan, Rodgers said.
Gates/Arrow Distributing, a Compaq-authorized distributor, will distribute the integrated
Compaq and Baan Enterprise Business Solutions in the North American market, Rodgers
said. Distributors for Europe, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region will be announced
later.
Compaq and Baan have cross-trained and certified consultants who support
Compaq/Baan solutions in the Windows NT environment, and the companies have
established Compaq/Baan Competency Centers in Barneveld, the Netherlands; Houston;
Memphis, Tenn.; and Redmond, Wash.
Compaq Computer Corp., in Houston, can be reached at (281) 370-0670 or
compaq.com. The Baan Co., in Putten, the Netherlands, can be reached at 31
(83) 805 8888 or baan.com.
Torsten Busse is a San Francisco correspondent for the IDG News Service, an
InfoWorld affiliate.
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Please direct your comments to InfoWorld Electric Deputy News Editor Carolyn April
Copyright c 1998 InfoWorld Media Group Inc.
InfoWorld Electric is a member of IDG.net
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